Re-Entry

It’s a resonant metaphor for me.

First, the hard gravity of home, hugging me close, keeping me rooted, always pulled toward groundedness. That familiar density, the thickness of the everyday. Life packed in close. Weightier elements forced inward, always pressing for center ground.

Then, there is lift-off, requiring that initial burst of will, of energy, to break away, to create the opening and seize it. Breaking the grasping claim of gravity, of habit, of routine.

A disorienting freedom. Endless undiluted space. A fall, surrender, into deep silence. Heavy soothing darkness, that pulls the stars closer and gives them sparkle. And what to do, how to react, when weightlessness snatches you from the grip of gravity?

A kind of sleep, a welcome death.
Transported to some place outside the calculus of clocks and paychecks, the catalogues of known consequence.
Freedom so thick, it bends my ear to my heart
And all its differently rhythmed musics.

But gravity asserts its hand again.
The descent is a gathering of speed, dropping out of those gaping, breathing spaces that live between the seconds and the minutes,
slicing through the turbulence of air transformed into a pummelling series of blows.
The friction generated heat. The crushing welcome of earth. Landing, soft or hard....
Home turf.

Easing back, into the harsh familiar.
Space sucked gently, to bone dry. And quiet pressed down until it forms a pulsing throb beneath, which is the heart, encased once again in its blind seeking.

No.... No real misery in being earthbound.
I’m back into my cycle of days, structures weighted for efficiency, applying pressure where it counts.

My two guys waiting to hear from a landlord when I left, a tension I easily eluded when I blasted into orbit. I found them panning on Queen Street three days after my return. Negotiated, wrangled, made the necessary promises. And today the deal was struck. They move in on the first. One of forty tasks addressed.

Writing everyday still, but barely. What was a natural glow, slowly becoming a polished artifact, not without its power. Like those dimmer, smog shrouded stars – no less there because I fail to see them. Knowing this is my sweetest consolation.

Here in these compact, marching days.